MORNING MUSIC NEWS FOR THURSDAY, JUNE 5

Posted 1 year ago

By Corey Sorenson

COMMON SIGNS WITH DEF JAM IMPRINT

NEW YORK (AP) — Common will be going back to his musical roots. He will reunite with his longtime friend and collaborator No I.D. — by signing on with Def Jam Recordings. Common says signing on with Def Jam makes it seem “like a new beginning” for him, musically. The rapper has also been heavily involved in movies, making several since his big screen debut in 2006.

JENA IRENE “WALKS” ON SUNDAY

LOS ANGELES (AP) — First, the prom — now the graduation. Jena Irene will get her diploma from North Farmington High School in Michigan — with the commencement exercises set for Sunday. She attended the prom with fellow “American Idol” contestant Caleb. There’ll be little time to party after graduation, with the “Idol” tour starting two days after she walks.

COREY HART RETIRES

MONTREAL (AP) — Corey Hart has retired after one last show in Montreal. The Montreal Gazette reports Hart sang a four-hour final performance before 12,000 fans at the Bell Centre Tuesday night. He hasn’t performed in more than a decade and has been in semi-retirement since 2000. Hart is probably best known for the songs “Sunglasses at Night” and “Never Surrender.” Tuesday may seem like an odd day for an artist’s final concert, but you can blame hockey for that. Hart had scheduled his farewell for last Saturday but the Bell Centre had to hold the spot open for a possible game 7 between the Montreal Canadiens and the New York Rangers that never happened.

MIDNIGHT OIL DRUMMER ON REUNION PLANS

SYDNEY (AP) — You can’t really have a reunion if everyone isn’t reunited. And that, says drummer Rob Hirst, is why Midnight Oil drummer hasn’t gotten back together. Hirst says the members of the Australian rock band want to do another tour — but front man Peter Garret has been busy writing a memoir. Hirst tells the online music magazine Faster Louder that the book “might take a while” — but everyone in the band is up for getting back together. Garrett quit the band in 2002 to go into politics. He quit his post as a Cabinet minister last year.

JOHN LENNON ARTWORK GETS SOLD AT AUCTION

NEW YORK (AP) — They were whimsical drawings and writings for a pair of humorous books done by John Lennon in the 1960s. But they fetched some serious money when they went up for auction yesterday. A nine-page parody of Sherlock Holmes drew a $209,000 winning bid. A cartoon of a boy with six birds went for $27,000 and a handwritten manuscript called “I Sat Belonely” went for $137,000 — well above its pre-sale estimate of up to $35,000. The auction was held by Sotheby’s, which says all 89 lots up for bid sold — with 83 percent of them going above the pre-sale estimates.

ELVIS PRESLEY’S FORMER RANCH SOLD

HORN LAKE, Miss. (AP) — It’s the place where Elvis and Priscilla Presley spent their honeymoon in 1967. And now, the singer’s old Circle G Ranch in Mississippi has been sold. The ranch went to a Florida real estate brokerage — but the price of the deal wasn’t disclosed. Plans for the sale of the property or development of it have been discussed off-and-on for more than 10 years. Presley owned the 155-acre ranch, just across the Tennessee-Mississippi state line in Horn Lake, Mississippi, from 1966-71. The building where he and his wife hung out after the wed — the “honeymoon cottage” — still stands today. Presley sold the property in 1972. No immediate word on what the new owners will do with the property.